Dutch government buys secret bank data

By Ben Berkowitz

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - The Dutch government says it has received a list of hundreds of people who have evaded taxes with secret accounts at banks across Europe, and it plans to pay off the informant who slipped it the information.

The deal echoes an early 2008 case in Germany, where the government purchased data on tax evaders from an informant about clients of a Liechtenstein bank.

The German case snared former Deutsche Post chief Klaus Zumwinkel, who was given a suspended jail term in January for evading nearly 1 million euros (901,690 pound) in taxes using a Liechtenstein trust.

In a statement late on Saturday, the Dutch government said it received the names, addresses, account numbers and phone numbers of several hundred of what the government calls "zwartspaarders," or "black savers."

"This is a group of tax payers which knowingly has been evading taxes for years with large sums of money," Deputy Finance Minister Jan Kees de Jager said in a letter to parliament.

A source familiar with the situation said there were nearly 500 people on the list. Their accounts were primarily in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands, the source said, with some accounts also found in Liechtenstein and Luxembourg.

The finance ministry declined to comment on the contents of the list.

The tax office has already started sending letters to some of the savers demanding an explanation. The accounts average around 200,000 euros each, with the largest ones in the tens of millions of euros.